A radio access network is generally formed of multiple cells of multiple base stations. Each cell needs to have a unique “cell identity” at an air interface for a UE (User Equipment, user equipment) to identify. For example, each cell is allocated a BSIC (Base Station Identity Code, base station identity code) in a GSM (Global System for Mobile communication, global system for mobile communications), each cell is configured with a PSC (Primary Scrambling Code, primary scrambling code) in a UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System, universal mobile telecommunications system), and each cell is configured with a PCI (Physical Cell Identity, physical cell identity) in LTE, where the BSIC, the PSC, and the PCI are each a “cell identity” used by the air interface to identify a cell. In mobility management, a handover target cell is selected by using the “cell identity”.
Neighboring cells need to be configured with different cell identities; otherwise, downlink interference is aggravated, handover is affected, and call drop occurs when the downlink interference is serious. However, the number of cell identities is generally limited; for example, there are only 512 PSCs in the UMTS, and 504 PCIs in the LTE. When there are a large number of cells, the cell identities need to be repeatedly used, that is, a same cell identity is used for multiple cells; however, these cells with the same cell identity need to be isolated as far as possible during network planning, so as to prevent a cell identity conflict caused by a fact that these cells are neighboring to each other.
However, due to complexity of actual networking, geographical locations, and environmental changes, it is difficult to prevent a phenomenon of a cell identity conflict, that is, a phenomenon that coverage of cells with a same cell identity is neighboring or even overlaps, in an existing network. For this reason, each equipment vendor has a corresponding solution to prevent, detect, and solve a possible problem of a cell identity conflict.
In an existing solution, a possible cell identity conflict is obtained by comparing cell information (for example, a measurement report, or a target cell in handover signaling) reported by a UE with a configured neighboring cell list. However, this manner relies on the cell information reported by the UE and the neighboring cell list; and if neighboring cell lists of two cells using a same cell identity do not have an intersection or the UE does not trigger an operation of reporting cell information, cell identity conflict detection cannot be performed.